In an automatic manufacturing environment, products that are being processed in each manufacturing process and semi-finished products that are waiting for further processing are referred to as work-in-process (WIP). In an actual manufacturing process, unbalance of productivity between previous and subsequent processes is caused due to differences of stability, utilization of process devices in each manufacturing process, as a result, the work-in-process is accumulated in its process devices and related storage devices (e.g., a supply reservoir). Accumulation of a large amount of work-in-process will increase transfer difficulty and cause non-uniform distribution of the work-in-process, even a current supply reservoir to which the process devices pertain has no place to store the work-in-process, which greatly reduces transfer efficiency and affects factory productivity. Besides, accumulation of a large amount of work-in-process is a great waste of production, excessive work-in-process being stored in factories will reduce liquid asset of the manufacturers and affect factory operation and market response sensitivity to a certain extent.
Therefore, it needs to provide a work-in-process management control method in an automatic manufacturing environment and a work-in-process control system using the work-in-process control method, so as to exercise automatic management control over the work-in-process generated in each process in the automatic manufacturing environment, shorten an overall turnaround period of the automatic manufacturing environment, improve transfer efficiency of the work-in-process among the respective process devices, and increase utilization of the process devices, thereby increasing productivity and reducing production waste.